May 22: See Popeye As It Was Meant To Be Seen — In Robert Altman’s Personal 35mm Print – One Nite Only

Monday, May 22 @ 7:15 PMPOPEYEDirected by Robert Altman • 1980
Robin Williams and Shelley Duvall are Popeye and Olive Oyl in this unlikely and sublime live-action adaptation of the timeless Fleischer Studios cartoons. Paramount went all out on their 1980 mega-production, which involved building an entire village in Malta (“Popeye Village” still exists as a tourist attraction), though domestic grosses fell significantly short of expectations. Producer Robert Evans hoped to tame the barbarous Robert Altman as he had Roman Polanski (Chinatown) and Francis Ford Coppola (The Godfather), but this was not the right film. Long overlooked in favor of more “serious” Altman pictures, Popeye, writes Scott Tobias, “is like a family-friendly re-imagining of McCabe & Mrs. Miller, moving the same mud-caked, dilapidated town from the Pacific Northwest to the Mediterranean seas without losing the anti-capitalist sentiment in the process.” The result is both heartfelt and manic, and exceedingly faithful to the original work. Why can’t all comic book movies be this great? With music by Harry Nilsson and Van Dyke Parks (later used to great effect in Paul Thomas Anderson’s Punch Drunk Love). Screening in a one-of-a-kind 35mm print from the Robert Altman Collection at the UCLA Film and Television Archive. (JA)
114 min • Paramount Pictures • 35mm from UCLA, Permission ParamountCartoon: Popeye the Sailor in “Goonland” (Dave Fleischer, 1938) – 16mm – 8 minAdvance tickets available on Brown Paper Tickets